


What have you done to my life?

by fineandwittie



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crack and Angst, Fluff and Crack, I don't even know., I fucked with Oliver's family history just a tad, M/M, Newport Mansions, OOC Elio...i think?, Pretend like his dad is Jewish and his mom convert when they married, Prince Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł of Poland is Jewish now, The leftover socialites of the gilded age, crackfic, movieverse, right here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 23:30:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13600743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: Elio with a college friend is in Newport, RI for winter break, visiting the friend's family. The friend's family just so happened to be Doris Duke.Oliver, coincidentally is Jackie Kennedy's nephew...sooo, you know what the means?Angst. It means Angst, but with a happy ending.





	What have you done to my life?

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd per usual.
> 
> I read this concept (what if the snow scene was Elio visiting Oliver in NE) and ran with it a bit. Also, altered it a bit.

The snow was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It draped over everything, like in all the world there was nowhere without snow, as though someone had wrapped the whole planet in beautiful wool batting. I couldn’t really believe what I was looking at, could hardly even believe where I was.

Newport, Rhode Island in the United States of America. 

I’d never been to America, before college, for all my parents were expats. They’d never seen any reason to bring me here and I’d never thought to question it. I’d applied to the Boston Conservatory on a whim, mostly because of its reputation. Boston edged out New York and Paris, for the money the school gave me. It helped that Boston was more like Milan than any of these New World cities with their gridlocked layouts. 

Now, three years into my program, I was confident that I’d made the right choice. Boston had written itself into my bones and I could hardly imagine living anywhere else, except maybe the villa. 

Boston in the winter, however, left something to be desired. _This_ , I thought, staring out the window of the bedroom I’d been given when I arrived at Rough Point. _This quiet tranquility is what Boston misses in the winter._

I’d accompanied Lillian, a close friend from school, to visit her aunt over the Christmas holidays. Her aunt, Doris Duke, apparently lived in an 105-room sprawl that looked more like a museum than a home, but there was something extremely compelling about the house. The fact that there was a genuine Monet hanging in my bedroom probably helped. 

I shook my head, taking one last glance at the view, and went to find Lillian.

“There you are!” She must have heard my footsteps on the stairs, because she popped her head out the doorway of one of the parlors. The one with the Picasso, I thought, but wasn’t certain. “Come in here. I’ve an old friend I’d like you to meet.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. She was a year younger than me and not quite old enough to drink yet. She hardly seemed the type to have old friends.

I followed her back into the room, distracted by the art for a moment, before I managed to focus on my gaze on the visitor. My heart stopped in my chest.

“This is His Serene Highness Prince Oliver Radziwell. Ollie—“

“I’m sorry. What?” I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out. It was Oliver. My Oliver. My brain wasn’t processing this. At any other time, I’d have thrown myself into his arms and possibly wept, but…her introduction was so absurd I thought I might never move again. I was of the floor now, marble just like it was. I couldn’t understand how _my Oliver_ was standing here being introduced to me as a prince. “What?”

Oliver had gone a sick, chalky kind of white and looked as though his knees might buckle at any minute. “Elio…” His voice was thin and whispery. 

Lillian stood at my side, blinking and staring around in confusion. “You two know each other.”

There was a rage building in me. I’d wished once that Oliver not have a life that I didn’t understand, that I wasn’t apart of or hadn’t seen. Clearly I’d wished in vain. His _entire_ life was one I didn’t know. Was all of it a lie? Was it a game for him? And what was he doing here?

Oliver nodded, jerky, and offered a wan smile, still not taking his eyes from me. “Elio’s father was the professor I did that summer residency with, Lill, you remember I told you about it.”

She frowned, nodding. “But didn’t you say that you—“ She cut herself off, eyes going wide. “Oh. Oh my god.”

She knew. She knew we’d slept together. If she’d been such good friends with Oliver, how had she not realized who I was before? How was she just figuring it out now? Why had he told her? 

The rage in me rose up like a punishing surf and I could no more control it than the tides. “You lied. The entire time you were with us, you lied. On your application, you lied.” I stepped forward and lifted the star from his chest. I wanted to snap the chain, to tear it from his throat. “Why even wear this? A mockery? How dare you—“

“Oliver.” He said. 

And just like that, it washed away. I was left hollowed out, as though the rage had burned up all the rest. I couldn’t breath, couldn’t think.

“Elio, let me explain. Please. Please let me explain.” His tone was desperate, his begging sincere. 

I swallowed away the bitter taste that hovered on the back of my tongue and stepped right into his personal space, closer than I’d been to him since our hug on the train station platform. I could feel his warmth. “Fine. But…before that, before you destroy my memory of you more than you already have, can you just…hold me? Once more? One last time?”

He made a soft, wounded, broken little noise and wrapped me in his arms. His breathing was ragged and I could feel the wetness of his teeth against my neck. He seemed to fold himself around me, as though I were the taller one, and he tucked his head against my shoulder. The angle must have been uncomfortable, but he didn’t even shift until I pulled back from him. 

His eyes were red rimmed, from the tears he’d shed against my skin and the effort that holding them back had been. My own eyes were dry, my breathing even. Yet, Oliver was a mess.

I could not fathom the change four years had made. He looked the same, but where in Italy he’d been brash confidence and ease, here he was spun glass. Beautiful but unimaginably fragile.

I wanted to be the one to squeeze that glass between my fingers and shatter him. I wanted to crack open my chest and hide him inside, between my lungs, where no one could ever hurt him. I wanted to hate him.

“Well?” I prompted, when all he did was stand and stare at me. 

Lillian had taken a seat on one of the couches to watch the exchange, eyes wide with excitement.

“I…I’m sorry that I never told you who I was. You…You’re European. Your whole family is…so…cosmopolitan. I thought perhaps you recognized my last name and simply didn’t care. It never occurred to me that you simply didn’t know who my father was.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, a habit I’d picked up from Lillian herself. “And who is your father exactly to make you a prince who lives in America?”

Oliver finally dropped his gaze to the floor. “Prince Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł of Poland. And my mother is Caroline Lee Bouvier.”

I frowned. “Bouvier…Wouldn’t that make her related to—“

“Jackie Kennedy. Yes. My aunt.”

I gaped at him. I couldn’t help it. I had imagined so many things about his life, his family, but this? Was not among them. “So you’re here because…”

“I’ve known Lillian since she was born. We’re here staying at the Castle at Hammersmith Farm for the holiday. I came over to see her. I didn’t know you were here. I…I didn’t know you were in the US at all. How long…Why…” His voice seemed to splutter out. There were tears in his eyes again.

I shook my head. “You said neither of us were going to pay for our affair.” Which is how I’d taken to referring to that summer in my mind, ever since the phone call when he’d told me he’d been in an off-again-on-again relationship the whole time. Unfair, probably, but I didn’t care. “I think you were wrong. You’ve been paying for it, haven’t you, Oliver?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Why are you here?”

“I’m here to spend the holidays with my friend, before we go back to Boston for the spring semester.”

If anything, that seemed to wound him deeper. “You…go to school in Boston? For how long?”

“This is my third year.”

His breath stuttered and he turned away from me, like he couldn’t bear to look at me. “You’ve been living in the US for three years and you never contacted me? A train from New York to Boston is hardly three hours. If…” He paused for a moment, took a deep breath. “If you’d called, I would have come. I would have—“

“Done what, exactly? Left your wife and whatever children you’ve managed to have in the interim to come visit your ex-lover? Your _male_ ex lover? What purpose would that have served exactly? Besides tearing my heart to shreds?”

He spun back to look at me, something like hope in his eyes, something like devastation in the lines of his body. I’d never seen anything quite so beautiful before in my life. He was completely covered, long sleeved sweater and slacks, but looking at him then, I saw the untouched undersides of his arms, his feet, the dusting of hair across his pecs and paleness of his thighs. 

I wanted to taste him again, just one last time and knew I couldn’t. I wanted to scream and scream and scream, but I couldn’t do that either. Because, four years later, at twenty-one, _I know myself_ and if I started, I might never stop.

“Elio, I never married her. We broke it off.”

“You…” It took me a moment to comprehend exactly what he was saying. When it finally worked its way through my brain, my knees buckled. I stumbled back to collapse on the couch next to Lillian. “You…”

“I couldn’t go through with it. Not…Not after you. Not after I heard your voice again over the phone…Elio…” He swallowed. It looked painful from this distance. “Are you…”

I couldn’t process anything. I felt like there was an invisible barrier between me and him. One I didn’t know how to cross. 

Lillian interrupted our silence. “I’m going to answer the question you can’t bring yourself to finish. No, Elio is not seeing anyone. Elio has never seen anyone all the time I’ve known him. He doesn’t date. Elio fucks people. One night stands only, never anything more.”

Oliver was staring at me again, eyes trying burrow their way into my soul. I started back. He had to know. Had probably always known. “You’re not the only one paying for our affair, Oliver.”

He flinched and shook his head, a single sharp jerk. “Stop calling it that. It wasn’t an affair. It…You make it sound vulgar...wrong. It wasn’t. Nothing we did together that summer was anything but exquisite.”

I rolled my eyes at him so hard I thought I’d sprain my skull. “Oliver…I fucked a peach and you nearly ate it. You wanted to eat it. Somehow, I don’t think anyone would define that as exquisite.” Oliver blushed a hot scarlet. 

Lillian made a high pitched sort of whine. When I glanced at her, she was staring at us both in horror. 

“What?”

She made the noise again. “Why? Oh my god, why? Why did you stick your dick in a peach? Why did he eat it? What? That’s…that’s disgusting.”

I shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I was 17. It seemed like a good idea at the time? It was…all very emotional, I promise. And he didn’t eat it. He nearly ate it, but then I had a sort of breakdown and wept all over him instead.”

Oliver shifted on his feet, shoulder hunching a fraction. The last time I’d seen that posture was in Bergamo. We’d been out to dinner and he’d gotten hard watching me basically fellate a spoon while eating dessert. 

I blinked. Was remembering it arousing him? Was he still…did he… “Come to think of it, I doubt that the bus ride to Bergamo would be considered exquisite. You couldn’t stop squirming the entire time. Unless it was exquisitely painful.”

The blush got darker on his cheeks, but so did his eyes. The pupil was rapidly swallowing the iris. Lillian noticed too, because rather than question what that meant, she merely excused herself. 

I turned my full attention back to Oliver, once she was gone. “You’re hard, aren’t you? Or getting there?” He turned his face away and didn’t answer. I continued anyway. “Good. That’s promising.”

His head snapped back around and he stared. “Oliver…” His voice was hardly louder than a breath.

“Elio.” I responded. “Elio, elio, elio, elio, elio…God, Oliver, I’ve loved you for a hundred years. I’ll love you forever. I don’t think I’ll ever recover from you.”

It took Oliver three steps to make it to the couch. He dropped to his knees at my feet and fell into my body, arms around my waist and head buried in my lap. He nuzzled at my hip with his nose. The gesture, like the peach, was kind in a way no one but Oliver had ever been to me. I couldn’t breath. Tears were beginning to well in my eyes and I couldn’t fight them. I wanted to give them to Oliver. 

“I love you, Elio. I love you more than anything in this world. I couldn’t marry if it wasn’t to you. I couldn’t bear even the idea of intimacy.”

“Can we…that is…Can we try? For something real? For more than a perfect Italian summer?”

Oliver pulled away to look up at me. “I’d give away my soul for a chance at something with you.”

I smiled. “Good, I’ll take it. You can take mine for insurance,” I said and I kissed him.


End file.
